


Love Makes a House a Home

by Kedreeva



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Feelings, Fluff, Happily Ever After, Happy Ending, Kissing, Marriage Proposal, Moving In Together, Other, Sappy, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), working through some issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley move into a South Downs cottage and agree to create their new home and life with their own hands.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 414
Kudos: 550





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_moonmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/gifts).



> Thank you to the_moonmoth for your contributions to the Fandom Trumps Hate charity event!  
> 

Crowley had once thought that the pinnacle of happiness was gazing upon a beautiful angel atop a wall around a garden as he worried about a kindness he had done. He had once thought that it was watching the angel’s eyes light up at the offer of mortal foods and fine drinks. He had once thought it to be the soft touch of the angel’s hand against his as he spoke about whatever subject had captured his interest this decade. He had once, much more recently, been absolutely positive that happiness was the feeling of warmth beneath his skin when Aziraphale looked back at him across a table at the Ritz with all of the love he had had to keep hidden because of _sides_ and _jobs_ written clearly over his entire face.

All of it, however, even the hand-holding that had ensued, even the first kiss Aziraphale had pressed to his lips, or the myriad that had followed, paled in comparison to the deep, consuming happiness Crowley felt seeing Aziraphale stand before the home they had purchased together, and smile with a dizzying amount of excitement.

“It’s going to need a lot of work,” Aziraphale said, glancing over as Crowley ambled to a stop beside him. “It’s all been a bit of a blur, but I do recall wanting to make a few changes inside.”

“More bookshelves?” Crowley teased, a sly smile curling at his lips.

“Among other things,” Aziraphale sniffed, but the warmth in his eyes never faded, never shuttered. He liked to be teased, just a little.

Crowley’s smile melted into something warmer to match, and he took shameless advantage of their new arrangement to lean close, and press his lips to Aziraphale’s temple before heading for the front door. “Well, come on then,” he said, fishing in his pocket for the key. “We’ve got an hour or so before the movers get in. We can miracle anything you want changed before-”

“No!” Aziraphale blurted, startling Crowley into dropping the key he’d just found. It tinkled to a stop on the worn door mat and sat, glittering up at them in judgment. Crowley turned to look at Aziraphale rather than fetch it, and Aziraphale shrank a little at the silent question. “It’s just… this place is _ours_ , isn’t it? And miracles are…”

 _Ah_ , Crowley thought. He could understand that. They had gotten away from _sides_. They had been working on making things that were _theirs_. He knew Aziraphale still used miracles, and Crowley used them himself, but perhaps this place, this one place that was fully theirs, that had arrived in their life after they were free… maybe it could be free of everything that had made freedom a goal instead of their natural state. Maybe this one place they could forge with their own hands, instead of letting Heaven or Hell in the door behind them.

He bent, scooping up the key, and then turned around to offer it out to Aziraphale, meeting his eyes. “I meant what I said, angel. Whatever you want, however you want it, that’s what we’ll do. If that means no miracles here, that’s fine. Humans get along without them, how hard could it be?”

Aziraphale’s laugh was small and huffy, because they both knew the answer was _very hard_ , but he took the offered key, and placed it into the lock, and let them into their new home for the very first time.

The inside of the house looked approximately the same as Crowley remembered from the open house, except for the missing mock furniture. A single business card sat on the island countertop in the kitchen, trapped underneath a gaudy mug with a photo of the cottage printed on one side and the word “Congrats!” on the other. Aziraphale put the mug away in one of the cabinets, and Crowley pocketed the card to toss when they got a bin.

“You know,” Aziraphale said slowly, “I haven’t got a single thing to cook with.”

Crowley raised a brow. “You’ve baked before.”

“That’s baking,” Aziraphale told him, pulling a little moue. “It’s _different_. Haven’t you…?”

Too late, Crowley realized the question Aziraphale had tried to ask the first time, and he shook his head. “Don’t eat much,” he mumbled, looking away.

“Oh but… you had such a very large kitchen,” Aziraphale started, and then his cheeks pinked prettily and he waved a hand. “I don’t suppose it matters. I’m sure there are plenty of restaurants in the area.”

Crowley’s gaze slid back down as Aziraphale began to walk away, and Crowley’s heart gave a too-hard thump. They had spent too long doing this for others. He didn’t want to do it on their own. He didn’t like the space it put between them.

“Aziraphale,” he called, and waited until Aziraphale stopped and turned to look back at him. “Do you...” Heat crawled up the back of Crowley’s neck at how bold he was about to be. “Do you want me to cook for you?”

He saw the bob of Aziraphale’s throat as he swallowed, and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Aziraphale was thinking the same thing he’d just done. “I wouldn’t want you to- not- not if you didn’t _want_ to, of course, but I...” He puttered to a stop, just staring.

With a slow smile, Crowley crossed the space between them. “I’ll learn,” he said. “Anything you want to eat, I’ll learn. We’ll have plenty of time. Come on.”

Aziraphale’s relief was nearly palpable as he followed Crowley through the rest of the house, reacquainting themselves with the rooms and things they had seen during the open house. Aziraphale trailed hesitant fingers over the smooth walls, and Crowley peeked out into the overgrown backyard, and they both stood around in the attached cellar and tutted about the lack of wine racks. They had just reached the master bedroom and started to discuss which closet would belong to whom when a horn sounded off from the road.

“The movers?” Aziraphale asked hopefully.

“I doubt it’s traffic,” Crowley said with a grin. They were, after all, out in the country, as much as one could be.

They hurried, for some definition of the word, down the stairs and out front door to find the movers already parked and starting to unload the truck. Aziraphale’s excitement crested and fell, and his hands found one another in front of him to worry his fingers together. Crowley hummed a question in his direction, uncertain what had gone wrong now.

“It’s just… where will we put it all?” Aziraphale answered the unspoken question. “If we’re to make changes, we won’t want to unpack everything...”

Crowley chewed the thought for a few seconds and then shrugged and stepped down to the walkway. “One thing at a time, angel. We’ll get it inside, and figure out what to do with it after, yeah?”

Aziraphale’s hands tightened minutely, and then released, falling to his sides as he followed after Crowley. “I suppose you’re right.”

It took less time than Crowley expected, to unload the van by hand than by miracle, and they both helped carry things. Aziraphale, partway through, stopped to unbutton his cuffs and roll up his sleeves – because “that’s what the humans do, Crowley,” - and Crowley nearly dropped the planter he was carrying when he noticed. Thankfully, it was an umbrella plant with a lot of experience in not disappointing him, and it stayed put despite his fumbling, but it was a near thing.

In retaliation, or perhaps just because he’d caught the movers staring twice, Crowley stripped off his own outer layers, and left himself in just a plain, black, strappy undershirt. Aziraphale seemed to ignore the change entirely, until Crowley turned around from setting down a box of his CDs only to find himself pushed gently against the nearest wall and soundly kissed until they were both a little breathless and pink-faced.

“You started it,” Crowley said as soon as Aziraphale stepped back.

“And I believe I finished it as well,” Aziraphale told him primly, the smirk around the edges of his lips entirely familiar.

They helped with the last of the smaller boxes, and Aziraphale directed the placement of the furniture all into one room, and Crowley saw the movers off with a hefty tip. What they had brought was not nearly everything, but it was enough that, unpacked, it would help them to feel at home. As it stood, they had built a fortress of boxes and plants, and Crowley closed and locked the front door as he went to join Aziraphale in it.

“We have a bed, you know,” he said quietly, leaning against the door frame and taking in the sprawl of the angel on their floor. He’d spread out a rug to lie on, the hideous tartan one that used to cover the floor of his bedroom at the shop. Crowley had, thankfully, only ever seen it once.

“It’s in pieces,” Aziraphale lamented, without opening his eyes. “And I’ve moved enough things today. I’m not sure I’d even go out for food.”

Crowley made a sympathetic noise, and folded himself down to the floor beside him, flopping over to lie on his back and stare up at their ceiling. “That’s a pretty serious threat.”

With more effort than seemed worth it, Aziraphale twisted and rolled to lie on his side, head propped on his hand so he could look down at Crowley with a soft smile. Crowley waited, but there didn’t seem to be any more than that, and so he leaned up a little, tugging at Aziraphale’s sleeve to bring him closer. He touched his lips to Aziraphale’s nose, which wrinkled in response as his smile widened. Crowley laid back down, eyes on Aziraphale’s, and a smile on his lips to match.

“We could order in,” Crowley suggested. “I’m sure somewhere would deliver.”

“To our home,” Aziraphale murmured warmly.

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “To our home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been BURNING with the desire to write something around [this image](https://lonicera-caprifolium.tumblr.com/post/614668704318472192) and the_moonmoth was kind enough to give me a wonderful excuse to do so, and the artist was kind enough to give me the go ahead, so now I am going to drag all of you into this fluffy, domestic hell with me, enjoy!


	2. The Bookshelves

Crowley smoothed a hand over the shelf before him, eyes ticking over the level he’d placed upon it. The liquid sat where it should, even though the shelf looked a little askew to him. He had, over the last two weeks, come to realize it was not the shelf but the _house_ that was a little bit tipped. This realization had solved many of his carpentry-related frustrations.

Not all of them, though.

As it turned out, walls were made of things that were not walls on their own. Crowley had, on some level, known this. He had watched buildings being built before, but it had not occurred to him to pay much attention to how. There was wood, and metal, and stone, and plaster, and drywall involved, but it had never _mattered_ what a wall was made of. If, for instance, Crowley decided to hang a framed painting, it simply stayed where he had put it. Any magic he had included in the hanging of it had, in the words of a certain angel, barely counted as a miracle.

The first video on youtube had even gone so far as to warn viewers not to anchor the shelving into drywall. Impatient, Crowley had skipped past the warning, and proceeded to pull the first set of shelves right out of the wall when he had first stress tested them. Thankfully, Aziraphale had returned to the city to tend to his shop, and was not there to witness Crowley’s botched attempt.

Crowley had told him about it anyway, that night when he called. Aziraphale had suggested that perhaps _the you tubes_ might have videos on basic home construction that could tell Crowley more about how houses were put together, and Crowley had nearly hung up on him.

Attempts two and three had not gone much better; Crowley had mismeasured wood, and used the wrong size of screws and run out of battery for his very shiny and impressive new drill. The room was oddly shaped, with a huge picture window along one side and – of all things – a fireplace across from it. A real, blessed fireplace, as if Crowley had not had enough of books and fire to last him several lifetimes.

But, this was the room Aziraphale had claimed for just his books, all of the ones that would fit in it, and so Crowley was determined to make that happen for him.

He removed the level, and pressed down upon the shelf more than hard enough to upset it if it had been anchored improperly, and the thing didn’t budge. Thank _someone_. He ran a hand over his hair, pulled back in a short ponytail, and took a few steps back to look at his handiwork, a curl of satisfaction unwinding like a waking cat within his chest.

The shelves covered the entire wall, side to side, top to bottom. Crowley had chosen simple walnut and spent days staining it after cutting. He’d had to toss a lot of it after measuring wrong, and after trying to level things by eye with the slant of the floor, but it fit so snugly now that it appeared to be part of the wall itself. There was more than enough room for all of the books Aziraphale had packed the first day, all of his most precious or very favorites, and it was only one wall!

“Beautiful,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

Crowley turned to find Aziraphale staring at him as if he’d- well, as if he had crafted a personalized bookshelf for him in their new home, if Crowley was any judge. “You like them?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, stepping into the room, “the bookshelves look good too.”

Crowley gave him a dry, amused look, but that didn’t stop the flare of love that licked behind his ribs. “Flatterer,” he accused, shuffling to give Aziraphale room to stand beside him and look at the shelving. “You really like them?” Crowley asked tentatively. “Because I can do as many as you like, I was going to do the rest of this room at least. Upstairs, there’s plenty-”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupts, laughter in his voice. “You haven’t got to do everything at once. Why, this one took you a few weeks. At that rate-”

“It’ll be faster,” Crowley assures him. “I had to learn a lot this time, but now I know it, won’t be too hard.”

“You could let me help,” Aziraphale said. “Or hire a contractor, even. You know, I’ve been looking that up on my computer, and there are lots of humans that do this sort of thing.”

“You’ve been using a computer?” Crowley asked, not sure whether to be impressed or concerned. He’d seen Aziraphale’s computer, and it was a wonder it even turned on anymore. “ _Your_ computer?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, a little indignantly. “I called that nice young man we met at the airfield, Newton, and he’s been helping me figure it out.”

“You called a human, on the phone, to ask how to-” Crowley cut himself off. “Angel, I told you I’d do it. What’s the rush? You’ve never been in a hurry in your life.”

He caught the subtle stiffening of Aziraphale’s spine and the very careful way that Aziraphale did not look at him. “I just think… that it would _nice_ , to actually move into the house we’ve moved into, is all.”

For a split second, Crowley remained confused and the words _but we’ve got plenty of time_ nearly fell out of his mouth and caused a mess. But even as he thought it, he realized that Aziraphale was not worried about the shelves or the move. He might not even actually be eager to leave the bookshop to come here, not exactly.

“Hey...” Crowley said softly, turning to face him. Aziraphale’s jaw was locked tight and he still refused to look at Crowley, eyes glassy. “No one’s going to stop us. We don’t have to rush just to- to _get away_ with this. One of the perks of being on our own side is that we get to make the rules, yeah?”

“I-” Aziraphale choked out and then clammed up with a shake of his head. “ _We._ We have been looking over our shoulders for a very, very long time, and I… I’m not sure I know how to stop.”

Crowley reached over and slipped his hand under Aziraphale’s, tugging gently until he could brush his lips over Aziraphale’s knuckles, finally getting his attention. “Me either,” Crowley admitted against the soft skin there. “But I don’t want to keep living like we’re just stealing time. It’s ours now. We get to keep it. Keep this. Keep… us.”

“You’re right, of course you’re right,” Aziraphale said, leaving the rear end of the agreement swinging loose with an unspoken but.

“But it doesn’t feel like it yet,” Crowley said.

He got it, he did. He’d had to stop a few times to get past the strangling need to _go faster_. Every time he’d made a call to arrange materials, he had expected the answering party to say his name like an accusation. But in Crowley’s long experience with terrible things, the only way out of them was usually through. He gave Aziraphale’s hand a squeeze before releasing it and crossing over to the folding table where he’d put the tools.

“You know,” he said a bit slowly, opening his hands over the tools, “I don’t think we necessarily need to hire anyone but you’re right that it might… go a bit faster if you wanted to join me. Could use someone to hold the boards, at least.”

Aziraphale’s eyes lit up a little at the excuse. “I suppose I could leave the shop closed a few days.”

“Not like you were really going to sell any of your books,” Crowley agreed. “I think your customers will understand.”

Aziraphale gave him a pursed-lipped look, but he could tell it was only to hide the smile. “Are you trying to tempt me, you old serpent?”

“Is it working?” Crowley asked, not bothering to hide his grin at all.

“It always does,” Aziraphale admitted, and joined him at the table.


	3. Painting the Walls

Crowley ran the roller over the wall before him, spreading a pleasant, warm shade of brown over the hideous mint and magenta stripes previously covering it. The upstairs room they were working in had clearly been a child’s room once upon a time, with a strip of some kind of wall paper along the top that depicted toys floating in clouds above the eye-burning colors. The carpet, to match the walls, was a worn, blue shag that might actually have looked nice if it had been installed in a room that did not scream over it.

He had found, in the last two hours, that he absolutely hated painting walls. They had pulled down the wall papering at the top and Crowley had sanded and patched the dents and holes in the walls, presumably where toys had been thrown during tantrums, while Aziraphale went out for fresh paint. He had chosen a color to match the wood he wanted to use for the bookshelves, having learned from the downstairs shelves that, while the cream looked alright as a background, a color that matched would make the shelves look even more built-in.

This room was not intended to be another library room, but they were making the most of the walls they had, in order to house as many of Aziraphale’s personal books as possible. They were never going to get them all, but Crowley figured if they could get the most valued of them – not the most _valuable_ , but certainly the ones _Aziraphale_ valued the most – then they could hide the rest in one section of the shop. Possibly under lock and key. Aziraphale had been reluctant at first, about altering the shop to provide more modern _rare books_. Ones printed within the last century, and mostly unsigned. But he had seen the appeal once Crowley had reminded him the shop had mostly been a front anyway, so that he had an excuse to be seen in London while doing heavenly jobs.

“Besides,” he had said, “you can still make a name for yourself as a _collector_ , just without the danger of having to _sell_ anything.”

Aziraphale had finally relented, and they went back to building bookshelves and painting terribly colored children’s walls over with something much more sensible.

Crowley ran the roller back down, and back up, until the paint began to speckle instead of paint, and then dipped it back into the pan at his feet. The pad of the roller didn’t roll so much as scooch paint around, and some of it slopped over the edge. Crowley cursed, fingers twitching to fix it, but he stopped in time before he could actually pull any magic.

“What’s- oh,” Aziraphale said from the other side of the room.

“Sorry,” Crowley said quickly, trying to scoop it up with his fingers to put it back into the pan.

“No!” Aziraphale said before Crowley got that far. “You’ll get carpet fibers in the paint.”

Crowley stopped, staring down at his paint-slicked hands. He couldn’t put it back on the carpet, and Aziraphale had just told him not to put it into the pan. He went to wipe it off on the roller, and got hissed at like a naughty puppy quickly enough he jumped.

“Just!” Aziraphale said, setting down his own roller. “Come here.”

Crowley let Aziraphale take his elbow and steer him out of the room and down the hall and into the bathroom. When the water had warmed a little, he obediently stuck his hands under the stream and began to rinse them clean. Guilt prickled along the back of his neck. He hadn’t meant to cause a problem, or ruin the carpet or the paint, or be a frustration. He knew how to handle paint, it was just completely different doing it with human tools on a human wall.

“Sorry,” he mumbled again. “I’ll figure out how to get it out of-”

“Oh, do hush,” Aziraphale told him from where he leaned on the door frame to watch. “That carpet is as appalling as the rest of the room. If I’d wanted to keep it, I’d have set down plastic before we started. I’ve dripped paint all over it by now. Have you been trying not to all this time?”

“Yes! I thought you wanted to keep it!” Crowley said incredulously, shutting off the water. “You said it was better than the walls!”

Aziraphale laughed, amusement snagging on his love. He plucked the folded hand towel from the countertop it had been unpacked to but not put away from, and opened it as he held it out. “It would be difficult not to be, don’t you think?”

The knot of tension in Crowley’s gut began to ease at the smile beaming directly at him. He placed his hands in the towel and Aziraphale closed them up in the soft cloth, rubbing gently to dry them.

“It matched your shirt,” Crowley said quietly, not looking at Aziraphale’s face.

Aziraphale looked down, and then huffed. “Hardly,” he tutted, but Crowley could hear the smile. “This is powder blue. That’s clearly cornflower. You obviously can’t have cornflower floors.”

“Obviously,” Crowley agreed. Aziraphale was just holding his hands now, and he was not about to be the first one to pull away.

“If you don’t mind it, perhaps when we’re finished painting, we can pull out the carpet,” Aziraphale said, not moving either. “We could get hardwoods installed, like downstairs. We don’t really need carpet in any of the rooms.”

Crowley did look up then, and Aziraphale released his hands and placed the towel on the sinkside again. “Looking to get a few more terrible rugs, are you?”

With a dry look, Aziraphale took a step back into the hall. “I’ll have you know, all of my rugs are extremely tasteful. The height of style when I got them, and I haven’t had space to display them all.” Crowley couldn’t stop his grin. “And,” Aziraphale added as they walked, “I think you won’t object to all of them. In fact, I packed one just for you.”

Crowley raised his brows, but Aziraphale didn’t elaborate, just headed for the stairs. Curious over what Aziraphale could possibly think Crowley would enjoy in a rug, he followed after. They had stashed the rugs in the small room just off the entrance, and Aziraphale wiggled them around until he found the one he was looking for. It was not as big as some of the rugs he owned, definitely not made to cover most of a floor, and it appeared to be fairly new in comparison.

Aziraphale hefted it up onto a shoulder and they walked it to the library to unroll it. Crowley started laughing the moment he could see it laid out, which served to bring a very big smile to Aziraphale’s face as well.

The rug was precisely the right size to make the optical-illusion printed onto it work. It showed a staircase, leading down into a darkened beyond, and despite all of his extra senses and his forebrain telling him that it was just a rug and that Aziraphale had definitely not just opened a stairway into the void, he still felt compelled to take a step back. He didn’t do it, but his human body did not appreciate the view _at all._

“What the devil are you doing with this thing?” he asked, delighted. He didn’t know if he’d want to display it in the _house_ exactly, certainly not in any of the rooms, but he could think of a lot of harmless chaos to cause with it. Maybe Aziraphale would let him put it by the front door, as a welcome mat.

Aziraphale blushed a little. “You know, I bought it for you a while ago, just before the whole antichrist business, and then. Well.”

“The whole antichrist business,” Crowley agreed. “And you just hung onto it all this time?”

“We did have bigger things on our mind, dear,” Aziraphale said. “And afterward, when I saw it would never have matched your flat, I thought perhaps I should look for one that would, but… well, it matches the floors here nicely, I think.”

“It’d match the bookshop floor,” Crowley pointed out. “How many customers do you think it’d keep away if you put it at the door?”

Aziraphale pulled a face that told Crowley he’d thought about doing _exactly_ that, more than once, and Crowley laughed again. “It wouldn’t be very _nice_ ,” Aziraphale says over him.

“And you’re nice, is that it?” Crowley asked, deeply amused.

“I’m _extremely_ nice,” Aziraphale agreed, raising his chin as if he disapproved, but Crowley could still see the bastard grin in his eyes.

“Are you so nice that you’d remove it, if it happened to be placed in your shop by some unknown, mischievous third party?” Crowley asked.

“Well,” Aziraphale said with a grin, and left it at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you are all very soft


	4. Bed Shopping

Combining two households that had been separate for the span of an adult lifehood was always a difficult thing. There was, as Crowley understood it, some degree of trying to mesh two styles of décor to come up with a new one. Sometimes there was the problem of having two of things a house only needed one of, like microwaves or dining room tables or toothbrush holders. Sometimes it was an easy decision- if one thing worked better than the other, or was more comfortable, or one had sentimental meaning and the other did not.

Other times, two immortal beings with tastes hundreds of years apart attempted to mesh, and there was no common ground to settle upon. Crowley had gotten a bed that was in no way comfortable to him (which resulted, more often than he would admit, in him sleeping on floors or couches or even walls and ceilings), and Aziraphale had gotten a bed that barely fit one person, as it was only for show. They both had artwork in various forms from across the centuries that didn’t adhere to the “keep one and toss the other” because there was only one of them. And the things they wanted to keep that they did have two of – like couches – did not match in the least.

Thankfully, as immortal beings surrounded by mortals and mortal timespans, neither of them were particularly attached to most of their furniture. They had kept Crowley’s favorite lounging couch from the shop, and Aziraphale’s reading armchair, and both of their desks ended up in computer room, which didn’t match terribly well but they agreed it didn’t have to. Aziraphale had judged Crowley for putting the throne in the computer room, and after a long discussion about getting about a room with an oversized piece of furniture in it, Crowley had relocated it to the conservatory.

However, despite the few other various pieces they had decided on, what they agreed to move in hardly put furniture in even some of the rooms, and still left them without a suitable bed.

Which was how they found themselves shopping for one.

Crowley had not, strictly speaking, bought his mattress or his bedframe or any other part of his bed, which may have accounted for its general lack of comfort. Aziraphale had not been in a store for a bed since opening the shop. As such, neither of them were particularly prepared for the experience. Crowley drove them out to a store they had looked up online, one outside of London, and walking in the door felt a little surreal.

There were just beds, set up with various sheets and duvets and pillows- so many, many pillows. More pillows than humans, who only had one head at any give time, could possibly have made use of, and in all different shapes and colors, only a few of which seemed practical. Crowley shuffled a little closer to Aziraphale, eyes darting to the two other customers across the shop that were standing near one of the beds having a discussion that didn’t afford them any clues as to the etiquette of places like these.

“Can I help you?” came a voice from behind them. They both turned to find a young woman standing there with a clipboard in her hands, looking very official but smiling too much to be serious.

“Yes, we’re looking to purchase a bed,” Aziraphale said, and then plowed straight onward with: “Can you tell me, are people meant sleep with all of those pillows, or do they take them off every night, and put them all back on in the morning?”

Crowley made a small, pained noise in the back of his throat, because he was _fairly_ certain that was _not_ the etiquette, but the woman just smiled. “Some people like to have a routine,” she said. “Did you have something specific in mind, for a size or a firmness?”

“Oh, something… something large enough for two, I think,” Aziraphale said a bit hesitantly.

“A queen or a king?” she inquired politely.

“Oh, definitely a queen,” Crowley said with a grin, and got a soft smack to his arm for his joke.

“I assume the king is a larger size?” Aziraphale asked, and when she nodded, he joined in. “I think we’ll look at both, but I believe the larger the bed the better. I haven’t tried sleeping before, you see, so I don’t know how much space I’ll want for it.”

The woman gave a politely confused look to Crowley, who just shrugged because he was not about to explain their origins to her. She took this in stride, and perked up again. “Alright, sirs, right this way. We’ll test a few with different firmness, so you can decide which you think you’ll like.”

“Test?” Aziraphale inquired. “Are we… that is, do we have to sleep on them?”

She laughed a little, but not the mean sort of laugh Crowley had heard so many humans give when another human didn’t know something simple. In fact, she seemed genuinely charmed, which Crowley was certain was a ruse. “That would take quite a while, I think. But you are welcome to lie down on any of the beds and see how they feel, find something you and your partner can agree on.”

“Oh, he’s not-” Aziraphale nearly seemed to gag upon the reflex, and Crowley felt his spine stiffen a little as he unconsciously braced for the denial. But Aziraphale just turned to glance at him, searched his eyes for only a second, swallowed, and then nodded. “Y-Yes, I think that would be lovely. I’m sure my partner and I can agree on something one time.”

She laughed again, giving them both a bright smile, and Crowley knew for sure the last one had been faked because this one outshone it like a star. She came to a stop beside a lovely bed decorated in black and white, with the least number of pillows Crowley had seen yet. “Let’s start with this one. Hop on!”

After a brief glance to Crowley, Aziraphale sat gingerly upon the edge of the bed. He gave a little bounce, testing it, and then looked up at the saleswoman. “Erm,” he said intelligently. “Should I…?” He gestured to the pillows.

“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “We recommend folks lie down the way they would in bed, to see how the firmness suits them. You can pull the covers back if you like, as well.” She leaned to check the tag on the side of the bed, and then added: “This one doesn’t have a pad on top, which means if it’s too firm but you want to keep the support, you can always add a little extra padding to the top to soften it up.”

With even more care, Aziraphale tipped himself up and onto the bed fully, mindful of his shoes, and laid on top of the covers. He settled his hands folded over his belly and stared straight up at the ceiling for a long few seconds, stiff as a board.

“You look like a funeral,” Crowley said, moving to the other side of the bed.

He pulled the covers back on his side, kicked off his shoes – Aziraphale had made him wear real ones, for exactly this reason – and slipped easy up onto the bed. It was as firm as he had been expecting with her warning, and he found it pleased him. It wasn’t as hard as a floor, of course, but it felt secure enough that he knew he would sleep without worrying he couldn’t get out of the bed quickly.

“Well, I’ve never slept before,” Aziraphale hissed, shifting so that he laid on his side to face Crowley. “How do I know what I like?”

“Is there a trial period?” Crowley asked, loud enough to address the saleswoman. “Return policy?”

“Thirty days, and the delivery fee is nonrefundable,” she answered, as if she got that question a lot, even though Crowley was fairly certain they hadn't had a either when he asked. “But we usually strive to make sure our customers don’t need to make use of that.”

“There you go,” Crowley told Aziraphale. “We’ll pick one you think you might like, and we can bring it back if you don’t. Try again until we get it right.”

“Really?” Aziraphale asked softly.

“Yeah, angel. We get second chances now,” Crowley promised. “As many as we want.”

“They’re not really second chances after the second one,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“It’s a second second chance,” Crowley said, and his heart skipped a beat at Aziraphale’s warm smile. He knew exactly how much Aziraphale liked very precise loopholes in very imprecise rules.

“Alright,” Aziraphale agreed. “Then let’s try a few more, shall we? And then we’ll take a chance on whichever we like best.”

“This one’s pretty good, actually,” Crowley said, giving a bit of a wiggle just to jostle the whole mattress.

Aziraphale gave him a tiny, judgmental frown. “We have to at least try some of the others. You’re not supposed to just take home the first one you see.”

Crowley refrained from saying that it had worked out pretty well for him, actually, and heaved himself up to sit on the edge so he could get his shoes back on. “I’ll lie in a few more beds with you,” he said, looking over his shoulder with a grin. “Where to?”

The saleswoman smiled at them both as they clambered to their feet. “Right this way,” she said, and led them onward.


	5. The Conservatory

Shopping, as it had turned out, was not as bad as Crowley had always imagined it to be, given that humans either loved it too much or hated it too deeply. Crowley had always had luck with temptations lurking around shopping centers, making sure people bought everything except the thing they’d come for, or making sure a thing they wanted was out of stock, or fiddling with temperature controls to annoy everyone into some irritable bad deeds.

However, when there was not a demon lurking around confounding the process, it actually went pretty smoothly. They had ended up spending another half an hour lying on various beds before Aziraphale found a favorite, and they had arranged to have one shipped to the cottage sometime in the next couple of weeks. They had had enough time, afterward, to enjoy a lengthy lunch in town and spend the rest of the day looking at furniture in other shops. They had purchased several end tables for the couches, and a coffee table with shelving underneath that had particularly excited Aziraphale.

“Oh, Crowley, it’s for storing coffee table books!” he had exclaimed upon realizing why the space was so short. “The kind with lots of pictures! We could get coffee table books.”

“Angel, any book you put on a coffee table is a coffee table book,” Crowley had told him, because he had dealt with the Bentley long enough to know how these things worked. “And anyway, wouldn’t it be a tea table? When was the last time you drank coffee?”

Crowley was still not certain where Aziraphale thought he was going to _put_ a coffee table, but he supposed it could go in the same room as the TV. They would probably have to have a discussion about putting feet on it, one where Aziraphale would protest a lot and Crowley would wait until he ran out of steam before saying _please_ , and he’d have to put the books down before he put his feet up, but he would, and Aziraphale would let him with only token protests.

Perhaps the more interesting of their purchases had been items for the kitchen. Crowley had had a very beautiful and utterly unstocked kitchen, and Aziraphale’s contained very little beyond a couple of worn plates, enough flatware for one meal, a kettle, and too many white mugs with angel wings for handles. They each had wine glasses, and Aziraphale had very, very nice tumblers and brandy snifters, for special occasions. Which was all to say that, even combined, they did not have a useful, full, or even _normal_ , kitchen.

Aziraphale had sought to rectify this oversight, rather enthusiastically, and Crowley had had to stop him before he tried to buy an entire store. “We don’t even know how to cook,” he’d said, as gently as he could over the pan Aziraphale had been inspecting. “We don’t know what we’d need to do it.”

“You’re right,” Aziraphale had said thoughtfully, and then beamed. “We’ll find a cooking class!”

They had not found a cooking class yet, but they had begun to look, and Aziraphale had begun to ask around town the last time they had gone for a meal. If they didn’t find one here, there would be one in London, or at least someone would feel the sudden urge to start one and there would be two spots left. Aziraphale had not wanted miracles in the cottage, but Crowley had reasoned London wasn’t anywhere near it, and whatever they learned they could bring back here to try without miracles.

Until then, however, Crowley had a day to himself. Aziraphale had a meeting at the shop with a collector, one that had – rather suspiciously – located a book with Aziraphale’s name written inside the cover just above the author’s signature. Aziraphale had misplaced it, perhaps, or it had been stolen at some point, or he’d had to leave it behind. Whatever the case, Aziraphale would find out and the collector would leave with no idea why he was in downtown London to begin with.

This left Crowley time to do the one thing he had never really done with Aziraphale; care for his plants.

They were, admittedly, in a state of neglect to one degree or another. He’d had them all relocated from his Mayfair flat, the biggest by the movers and the most delicate by his own hand driving back and forth. Unfortunately for them, that had been the most care they had seen since Crowley first stepped foot in the cottage. He had watered them a little on breaks from building and cleaning and shopping and arranging, but for the most part they had arrived, been dumped somewhat haphazardly into the conservatory where they could get light, and that had been that.

Until now.

Now, he got to spend the better part of the day in the conservatory with them, making sure that they had their proper places and could keep an eye on one another. He wasn’t entirely sure that they could communicate to keep one another in line, but he wouldn’t put it past some of them. If nothing else, it ensured that what he did to one of them, the rest would see. Toward that end, he grouped the largest of them around the edges and the smallest further in, and then used his newfound carpentry skills and a good bit of the leftover bookshelf wood to build a stepped shelving unit to put some of the smallest, most delicate pots onto for display in the very center.

Not, he thought, that there was much to display at the moment. The orchids had gone out of flower and the violets were barely hanging in there. Even the peace lily, which was arguably the hardiest of any of his plants, had drooped its leaves into an unpleasant shape. He may not have watered them _enough_ lately, but they weren’t even trying. He’d let them go far too long with no amount of discipline, and that just wouldn’t do.

He had just begun to stalk through the now-immaculately-arranged conservatory, ready to choose the worst of the lot to make an example of, when he heard the front door close. As soon as it had, Aziraphale called his name; he had come home early, or Crowley had severely lost track of time, and either was equally likely. Crowley was in the middle of quickly weighing the merits of giving up on his task now when Aziraphale appeared in the entryway.

“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaimed, eyes wide and smile bright with pleased surprise. “It looks quite lovely in here like this.”

Crowley let a little of his disappointment seep into his next words. “It certainly would if these slackers would get their act together. I was just looking for the worst one to make an _example_ of.”

A little curl of satisfaction licked at his gut to see many of the plants rally a little, holding themselves a tad more firmly in an attempt to not be last on the list. The satisfaction, however, lasted only as long as it took for Crowley to turn his attention to Aziraphale and find himself faced with a mixture of confusion and hurt. Guilt he could not explain burned under her sternum and stayed there even after Aziraphale’s expression melted into something softer.

“When was the last time you watered them?” Aziraphale asked. There was no accusation in his tone. If anything, it almost sounded like an _apology_.

“Today!” Crowley answered, the snarl coming out more strangled than he’d meant. Hindsight was 20/20 and he could already see where he had gone wrong in telling Aziraphale about something Aziraphale wouldn’t understand. He’d never kept plants.

“And before that?” Aziraphale asked, just as patient as the first time.

Crowley’s jaw clenched and relaxed a couple of times to keep a snappy answer caged, and he tried to think back to when he had last been in the conservatory. It hadn’t been long ago. Surely it hadn’t been more than a week. Except… they’d been in and out shopping all week. And the week before that – or was it two? – they’d been stuck in London while the contractors installed hardwood floors in the upstairs rooms. His heart sank a little at the realization, and it must have shown on his face because Aziraphale shuffled a little closer and stroked a hand over his hair, down his cheek, to finally rest under his jaw and lift his head enough to look at him.

“They cannot be expected to flourish without care,” said Aziraphale gently. “They might survive it, but they don’t deserve having to. They don’t deserve to be punished for not getting what they need. And Crowley...” Crowley’s eyes finally flicked up to meet his. “Neither did you. Sh- She should have taken better care of you.”

He felt his nose wrinkling and he pulled out of Aziraphale’s grasp. “Well, she didn’t,” he bit out. “She just tossed us out with no warning. But the plants _know_ better. I’ve told them...”

It sounded much worse aloud than it did in his head, and he knew how Aziraphale would react to it even as he finished saying the last words.

“I think,” Aziraphale said slowly, “that if we really are leaving our sides behind, we ought to leave as much of them as possible. Perhaps that… includes the resentment?” Crowley could feel Aziraphale’s eyes upon him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look again. He was still getting used to things like this. It came uncomfortably close to mercy, to forgiveness, to things he desperately didn’t want to care about and wouldn’t accept from anyone else. “I think that we… can afford to treat ourselves and our charges a little better than we’ve been treated, ourselves.”

Crowley blew out a breath and scrubbed his hands into his hair and then stalked a few paces away, only to boomerang right back again. “You want me to be _nice._ ” He threw the word down like a gauntlet, but Aziraphale refused to pick it up.

“I want you to treat your plants the way you’d like to be treated,” Aziraphale told him. “Rather than the way you’ve been treated in the past. We _are_ moving forward, after all.”

Without so much as an errant sound, Crowley stared up at the ceiling, or maybe through it, or maybe just in the same general direction. Forward. Aziraphale, of all people, with his 200-year-old overcoat and his collection of first editions and his vintage wines and his complete and utter inability to take a first step untempted, was asking him to move forward. Something had gone wrong. _He_ had gone wrong, somehow. He let out a breath and shook his head and not-very-discreetly wiped at the sting in his eyes.

“How?” he managed, dropping his gaze to the plants around them. “How’m I supposed to know how I want to be treated? I’ve never had a say in it before.”

He finally risked a glance when Aziraphale didn’t answer, and found Aziraphale just staring at him with a little smile slinking around the edges of his lips. “Perhaps,” he said when he had Crowley’s attention, “you could start by treating them – and yourself while you’re at it – how you want _me_ to be treated.”

 _That_ left Crowley wiping at one eye with the heel of his hand again, trying to hold it together. _That_ was too much. Aziraphale deserved kindness. He deserved good things and soft words and gentle touches. He deserved all of the books he could possibly want and the finest spirits and the best foods the world had to offer; hell, he deserved the whole entire world on a platter, and the idea that he genuinely thought Crowley ought to have the same left Crowley feeling more than a bit raw. It was one think to want such things for himself – most living things could be that kind of selfish and prideful – but it was another entirely to hear Aziraphale say he ought to _have_ them.

Of course, he could articulate none of that, so he just kept swallowing against the lump in his throat and swiping at his eyes until they stopped their nonsense, and as soon as they did, Aziraphale was in his space, pulling him into a hug and chuckling in a not-unkind way. Crowley tucked his nose into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck and held on in return, relishing the soothing feel of Aziraphale’s hand stroking over his hair.

“That’s not fighting very fair,” Crowley mumbled into Aziraphale’s neck. The words scratched at his throat on the way out. “I got what I… but you did what you were supposed to do. You deserve better than what you got from those wankers upstairs.”

“I’ve _got_ better,” Aziraphale said, ignoring Crowley’s false-start and pressing his cheek a little tighter to Crowley’s hair. “I’ve got _you_. And we’ve both got this lovely place together, with my books, and your plants, and each other. And we both deserve that.”

Crowley turned his head a little, enough that he was sure Aziraphale could feel his smile against his skin. “You’re a sap, you know. An absolute hopeless romantic.”

“Whose fault is that, do you think?” Aziraphale tutted, but far too warmly to actually be chiding.

“Rumi,” Crowley said, grinning wider when Aziraphale snorted. “Austen. Brontë, maybe. Dozens of humans, I expect.” He pulled away, but just far enough to see Aziraphale’s face. “That American woman, a while back. Williams.”

“The one that quoted you waxing about the stars?” Aziraphale said with a smile, one that did nothing at all to hide that he was about to be a little shit. “And who was it that made sure I got a copy of that poem? In fact, who made sure I had copies of _all_ the best, most romantic first editions?”

“You liked them!” Crowley protested, but it sounded weak even to him.

“I did,” Aziraphale admitted, still smiling. “I had hoped it meant… well. Exactly what it did. That you…”

“That I loved you,” Crowley finished for him, and it was Aziraphale’s turn to drop his gaze, a pretty pink blush highlighting his cheeks. “It did. It does.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said fondly. He stepped back and cleared his throat as he looked around them with the sort of business-like primness that said they’d hit a little too close to home on something Aziraphale was not quite ready or willing to face. “Tell me, have you got any small plants?”

Crowley let him change the subject; one of them unearthing deeply buried personal issues was enough for one day. “A few,” he admitted, although he knew there was probably a difference between what he considered small and what Aziraphale did. “Built them a rack, if you care to see.”

“I do care,” Aziraphale said brightly. “Do you think any of them would do alright indoors? I mean, further in,” he clarified. “Perhaps on a bookshelf?”

Crowley’s brow furrowed in question. “That’s where your books go.”

“It is,” Aziraphale said, with the sort of slow drawl that said he was waiting for Crowley to catch on. “But I thought… perhaps they could use a bit of decoration? A personal touch, you might say. A little bit of you mixed with a little bit of me?”

Although he could hardly breathe around the lump in his throat, Crowley nodded his agreement. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the conservatory just long enough to pluck one of the smallest pots from the top of the shelves he had made. This had been the last plant he’d taken in before the move, and it was flagging pretty hard, but he had no doubt that an angel would be able to bring it around. He emerged from the greenery to where Aziraphale stood, waiting patiently, and presented the small pot.

“It’s called a snake plant. It’ll get bigger, probably too big to stay on a shelf,” he said, suddenly and inexplicably nervous about his choice. “You can put it back in here if it’s too much, or I can-”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted, before he could get a good ramble going. He plucked the pot from Crowley’s grip and cradled it gently in both hands as he smiled at Crowley once again. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”

“Yeah?” Crowley asked.

“Yeah,” Aziraphale echoed. “Why don’t you come help me pick a spot for it, and then perhaps we can go get dinner.”

With that, Aziraphale turned toward the library, with the plant in his hand, and Crowley at his heel, and that was precisely what they did.


	6. The Bed

The furniture they had ordered arrived that week, and Aziraphale took some time off from the shop to come arrange it exactly how he wanted. Crowley hovered nearby the day the first of the items arrived but Aziraphale didn't actually needed any help to move anything. Crowley still had fun watching all the bending and flexing and casual shows of absolute strength Aziraphale put on for him.

He did have to intervene when Aziraphale began stacking large, photo-heavy books atop the coffee table as if it were some kind of vertical bookcase. “You’re meant to only choose a couple,” Crowley said, hastily jumping forward to stop the wobbling tower from toppling. “Two, or three at the most, angel.”

Aziraphale gave him a crestfallen look. “But I want to look at all of them, eventually.”

Crowley had seen Aziraphale’s _eventually_ reading habits, and began to break down the pile by gently setting some of them on the nearby couch. “They’re not really _for_ _you_ ,” he explained. “The humans don’t read their own coffee table books. They’re for guests, I think. Something to start a conversation.” He considered that for another second and then shook his head. “I’m not even sure they’re for guests. I’ve never seen a single human reading one.”

“So they’re… decoration?” Aziraphale asked, tone lost in confusion on the way to affront. He looked down at the books, and picked up the nearest as if suddenly seeing it for the very first time. “How odd.”

“Really, Aziraphale,” Crowley said with a smirk and unparalleled fondness. “You hadn’t thought humans actually read all the books they buy, did you? Collecting them and reading them are separate hobbies for most people. Half the ones collecting the same books you do don’t care about what’s in them, just how old they are. Worth money that way.”

Aziraphale frowned. “How horrible.”

“Yeah.” Crowley’s chuckle caught in his throat when he realized they were crossing into territory that would upset Aziraphale. He was not in the half that didn’t care what was in the books. He’d read every single one of the ones on his shop’s shelves. Some of them more than once. “Uh, why don’t you pick two of the ones you most want to read?” Crowley suggested. “We can look at them together when we get time.”

With a sigh, Aziraphale looked around at the piles Crowley had made, and from within one he pulled a large, beautiful book that appeared to be about the history of art. He turned it this way and that as if it might be something other than just a book, before finally settling it artfully toward the center of the little table. He looked wistfully back at the rest of them, and then up to Crowley.

“I think you should pick the other one,” he said. "That way there's one from each of us."

Which was how his big book of astronomy ended up on the table, and why Crowley spent the better part of the rest of the week in the bedroom despite the lack of a bed. Aziraphale respected his request to not be interrupted, and instead took care of the rest of the furniture himself. Crowley heard him bumping around downstairs, unloading boxes and putting away books in between. He only came knocking when it was time to attend their first cooking class, and he didn't peek at Crowley’s project when Crowley opened the door to join him.

Now Crowley was back at the house a little early to clean up that same project, and as he let himself in the door, he found himself thinking that the house had begun to look a lot more like a home. They still had work to do, of course, but that was part of the reason he was here. The bed was finally being delivered, and he'd already called to delay it twice before so he could finish working. He was close enough to finished now, though, and he was desperate to share both the project and the bed, so here he was to make space.

He spent a while cleaning up his supplies, and putting them away in a plastic tub he hid in the closet for now. He pulled up the plastic he had laid down to prevent a mess, and carried it out to the bin. The bin had been one of the first, most obnoxious human adventures they’d had here; Crowley had never paid a bill for anything housing related in is life – nor had Aziraphale – and apparently humans don’t do things like pick up the rubbish bins unless the bill has been paid. In retrospect it seemed obvious but at the time it had involved a lot of making phone calls and confusion about what things actually came with the house and what things did not. Rubbish collection did not, but neither did water or electricity or gas, at least one of which Crowley felt was essential enough to be included.

They had gotten it sorted eventually, and Crowley felt confident that the trash he threw away now would be picked up in a few days this time. He returned to the upstairs to make sure he had gotten it all, and that there was nothing left to hinder the installation of the bed. Although they had each put a box of personal effects into the bedroom upon arrival, neither had yet been unpacked, and they were out of the way, so he returned to the ground floor to make sure the path to the stairs was clear.

All told, the cleanup and preparation didn’t take very long, and Crowley had several hours to himself. He knew better than to try to unpack any of Aziraphale’s books, and he didn’t want to unpack his own things, so he retreated to the conservatory and spent the next few hours among his plants. He had tried to take what Aziraphale had said to heart. He had put them on watering schedules that made sense for their species and checked their various soils over and bought himself a very sleek set of care tools that he probably ought to have had all along.

All of which culminated in the very unfortunate discovery that perhaps Aziraphale had been a little, tiny, eensy-weensy bit right. Whatever minor catharsis Crowley had ever found in yelling at the plants to do better, or in taking out the least of them, or even in watching them tremble before him… all of it paled in comparison to the shock of relief he felt the first time he let out a steadying breath, stroked the pad of a finger down the glistening, broad leaf of his _Strelitzia_ and nervously bit out _good job_ practically under his breath. It had held perfectly still for a long moment, the way he didn’t know plants were supposed to do, and then very, very tentatively lifted against his finger.

Something shockingly close to grief, something that was definitely not related to regret, had run cold through his veins, and settled in his belly, and left his cheeks wet. He hadn’t gotten the nerve to apologize to any of them yet, and wasn’t sure he would for a long time, but he had found other words. He had found _you’re beautiful_ , and _I’m proud of you_ , and _I’m going to take care of you_. He had found a lot of words he had never dared have the nerve to whisper to Aziraphale through the years.

His plants had never looked better.

He strolled among them now, misting and petting and murmuring hesitant, soft praise to the ones who were looking best. He trimmed off leaves they had let go in order to focus on the better parts of themselves.

A part of him knew that he was perhaps not the best creature in existence to be doling out kindnesses, but… it felt good anyway. It felt the same way doing Aziraphale’s blessings had always felt, after the burn of holiness had faded. Ostensibly, the words were meant for the plants, but Crowley still heard them. He still thought of them and formed them and set them free in the world, and they settled into his skin, into his bones, and left behind something heavy and warm and healing.

Crowley didn’t know how he was going to get Aziraphale back for this wonderful travesty, but he had every intention of doing so.

He lifted his head from where he’d been asking a small succulent if she thought it was raining in her homeland and listened closely. He had heard a car door close, but the conservatory’s glass walls were thin enough that sound carried from the next house over sometimes. Then he caught the quiet sound of voices and decided it probably was the movers after all. Quickly, he stashed his tools and rinsed his hands before heading to get the door for them.

When he opened it, however, it was Aziraphale standing there, looking just as surprised to have the door opened for him as Crowley was to have done it.

“You’re early,” Crowley said at the same time as Aziraphale said, “You’re here.”

“Where else was I going to be?” Crowley asked as he stepped aside.

“Out, I suppose?” Aziraphale said as he entered and, in an extremely gratifying move, carefully shucked his outer coat to hang up beside the door. Warmth curled up in Crowley’s chest and set his heart blazing. “Or not here yet, or maybe out in the yard.”

“Came to clean up,” Crowley said. “Get everything moved out the way before the bed arrives.”

Aziraphale frowned, just a little. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help, then,” he tutted. “Perhaps I can make it up to you.”

Crowley smiled. “We’re beyond owing, I think. At least to each other.”

“Hm,” Aziraphale said, as if not quite sure he believed that. “At least let me make dinner tonight. I can make that nice risotto we learned in class.”

“Oh, angel,” Crowley said with a grin. “When have I ever been able to resist eating with you?”

“Never.” He gave Crowley a smile that said he’d known exactly what he was doing. “How much longer do you think?”

Leaning to one side, Crowley glanced out the window but there was no sign of a moving truck, so he shrugged. “Enough for me to show you something.”

Aziraphale followed him up the stairs without argument, and down the hall and into the bedroom. He raised a bow at the black ceiling, which had been eggshell last week, but Crowley had made sure to ask permission first, so he knew Aziraphale wouldn’t actually comment. Crowley crossed the room to the windows, and drew the blackout drapes shut. He’d brought them from his flat’s bedroom, one of the few decorative items he’d wanted to bring immediately. He had a difficult time sleeping with the city lights, and there might not have been street lamps and lit-up buildings around here, but he didn’t want headlights flashing in and interrupting anything.

They did their job beautifully, shuttering out the light and dropping them into nearly utter darkness. Aziraphale, apparently catching on, closed the door behind him and completed the effect.

“What’s all this about?” Aziraphale asked, peering around in the dark.

Crowley’s eyes didn’t need as much light as human ones, which meant he got to watch as Aziraphale’s adjusted, and see the moment he noticed what Crowley had done.

Above them, the formerly black ceiling had turned into a glowing scape of stars nestled in the colorful folds of a nebula that almost seemed to move. Crowley managed to look away from the awe on Aziraphale’s face so that he could see, too. It did not match any nebula in the galaxy, or in the universe at all, because it was the one Crowley had planned to craft next, before he’d… But, since he hadn’t had to obey any rules this time, he had placed some of his favorite constellations in the nursery dust. Orion and his dogs. Libra and Monoceros and Centaurus.

And there in the center, Cygnus with its wings spread wide over where they would put their bed. Wrapped around its shoulders, Serpens.

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed, the single syllable dropping off at the end in a way that dragged Crowley’s attention back to him. “Oh, Crowley… we- we said no miracles.”

Of all the things Crowley had expected Aziraphale to say, that was not one of them. He could not prevent his bark of laughter, or how it startled Aziraphale. “There’s no miracle, Aziraphale. I painted it, by hand, with real human paints. Good ones, too. Took me a bloody week, and it’s not quite done, but… I wanted to show you while there was nothing in the way.”

“But it looks like- how did you…?” Aziraphale finally looked down, peering at Crowley in the semi-darkness. “You were a starmaker...”

The softness in Aziraphale’s tone cut, but not entirely in a bad way. It reminded Crowley of what he had lost, but also that he had found someone who not only understood what he’d had, but also understood what it had meant to lose it. Someone who wanted to share in that loss, if it meant alleviating it even a little. Crowley smiled and looked down.

“Something like that,” he agreed. “Felt more like… being an artist, I think.”

Aziraphale remained silent for a moment, and cleared his throat. “Have you thought about doing it here?” he asked. “Art, I mean. You’re _very_ good at it. I… I never knew.”

“Don’t exactly advertise it,” Crowley mumbled, but that wasn’t the whole truth, and after everything, Aziraphale deserved truth. “Wasn’t exactly _allowed_ , either.”

It wasn’t that painting – or any form of art, for that matter – was forbidden in Hell. No one there would have thought of it in the first place in order to forbid it. Not a single demon down there would have had the imagination to create something beautiful, even if they’d had the inclination. The closest any of them had ever gotten to _art_ was the damp, dirty posters someone had put up on the walls as a joke a long time ago. They weren’t even funny, by Crowley’s estimation, just sort of sad.

However, even if art itself was not banned, _nonconformity_ was. Crowley had done his level best to only set a toe out of line where it involved Aziraphale. In other respects, although he may have done some slightly more creative jobs than other demons, his imagination went toward working evil. For some value of evil, anyhow. The value where a lot of people were mostly just annoyed, and how they took it out upon one another would become something Crowley got to claim on his taxes.

But art for art’s sake? Or worse, art for _beauty’s_ sake? For the joy it brought, for how good it felt? No, Crowley could never have gotten away with doing art of any real kind. Even if he had hidden it away for just himself, the stress of worrying over someone finding it would have ruined the value of doing it in the first place.

“Well,” Aziraphale said casually, drawing him back to the present. “There’s no one to say it’s not allowed now. If you like doing it, I think you should.”

Crowley wrinkled his nose a little, but was surprised to find he didn’t really mean it. “I don’t know. Art for the humans?” he said, trying to make it sound like disdain when the reality was that he’d done it before and he remembered rather acutely the first time humans had managed to see one of his designs. He remembered the awe, the love with which they had shared the discovery. He remembered how it had made him feel, when he had been so far removed from it for so long.

“Not if you don’t want to,” Aziraphale said quickly. “You could do it just for us. For here.”

“For here?” Crowley echoed, looking up with a bit of an incredulous grin. “There’s nowhere to put paintings. The walls are all bookshelves.”

“We can put doors on them, like cabinets, and you could paint those,” Aziraphale said, as if this was one of their long-standing arguments rather than one they’d just come up with brand new. “It doesn’t matter how, we can sort that out when we get there. Do you _want_ to paint? Make art again?”

Crowley just stared at him helplessly for a long moment before shaking his head a little in disbelief. “Yeah,” he breathed, as if it’d been punched out of him instead of volunteered.

“Then you shall,” Aziraphale said, deciding it for both of them with his tone. He crossed the space between them and seized Crowley’s face in both his hands, to make him look at him when he next spoke. “I need you to understand, Crowley, that this isn’t _my_ cottage. It’s _our_ cottage. _Our_ home. I have an entire bookshop to keep books in. We can make space to put the things you love on our walls, too.”

Slowly, Crowley turns his head in Aziraphale’s loose grasp, enough to press a kiss to his palm. “What I love doesn’t need to be put on a wall,” he mumbled against Aziraphale’s skin

Aziraphale hummed in the back of his throat and his grip loosened a little more and he leaned until their foreheads touched. “I’d like to make an argument to the contrary,” Aziraphale told him, smile thick in his words. “There’s no bed, after all.”

Crowley opened his mouth to amend his statement, just in time for the doorbell to ring with awful, clanging sounds. They jerked apart at the startling sound – Crowley had not yet heard the bell ring, as even when the others delivered items they had knocked – and then Aziraphale huffed out a relieved laugh when it was nothing dire.

“I suppose I deserved that,” Aziraphale said, eyes twinkling in the false starlight. He held out a hand to Crowley. “Shall we?”


	7. The Surprise

Crowley shouldered open the front door, the three boxes in his hands balanced rather precariously as he did so. Kicking the door shut behind himself nearly toppled the stack, but some wobbly, questionably-human acrobatics managed to save them. He paused long enough to make sure they really were stabilized before he began to slip off his shoes and call: “Aziraphale? You home?”

He didn’t think the little lick of warmth in his chest at being able to use that word would ever get old.

There was no answer, so Crowley followed his nose to the kitchen, where he could smell something delicious cooking. He slid the packages onto the counter, peering around the empty kitchen as he took the top package to the fridge. There was wine already chilling, a vintage Crowley knew Aziraphale favored about as well as Crowley did, which meant it probably went with whatever was in the oven. Crowley guess some kind of casserole, maybe the lasagna they’d just learned, something that would use the raw breadstick dough left to rise on the top shelf. Then again, it was a white, so maybe Aziraphale had other plans.

He poked his nose into the dining room, just in case Aziraphale was setting the table, but found it already set, only missing the food. Two of his biggest plants had been relocated to the room, which was a little annoying as there was no natural light here, but he ignored it for now and called Aziraphale’s name again. When there was still no response, Crowley’s belly began to tighten with fear.

Although the food in the oven didn’t smell burnt or abandoned, Crowley hadn’t been to the cottage in a week. Aziraphale had expressly asked him to keep away for a bit, because he had a surprise, and Crowley had listened. Now he wondered if that was a mistake. The cottage felt frozen in a moment of time, as if Aziraphale had been here one second and disappeared the next. Very, very few things could do that to an angel, and none of them were good, and Crowley should have been here to stop it.

“Angel?” Crowley shouted, ready to start tearing through the house when he heard a faint response from the direction of the library.

He dashed toward the sound, barely noticing that it seemed as if most of the conservatory’s plants had been movedinto the library instead. They were going to have to discuss _how many_ plants could accent a library before it became a greenhouse, but right now all Crowley wanted to do was see Aziraphale in one piece and safe. Discussions could wait.

“In here!” he heard, from the far side of the library. So far on the other side that it had actually come from the conservatory itself.

Crowley slowed as he reached the entrance, and realized it wasn’t _most_ of the plants, it really was _all_ of the plants. The whole conservatory was empty, save for his throne chair, situated across from the entrance and standing out against the newly cleaned, dark-slate tiles on the floor. Aziraphale sat in on throne, feet on the floor and arms on the armrest and a bright smile on his face. Some of Crowley’s worry bled into irritation.

“What’s all this?” Crowley asked as he stepped into the conservatory. “I thought you’d been taken, I-”

He froze, lifting his feet quickly and then scrambling to cross the couple of feet back to the entryway before he could be burned too badly. The floor was hot, the same way as a sun-scorched beach in the dead of afternoon, or, Crowley thought with a sinking heart, the same way as the consecrated ground of a church had once done.

He looked up, heartbeat loud in his ears, to find Aziraphale staring in bewilderment at him. “Crowley?”

“You-” Crowley managed to choke out, mind reeling. Was this it? Had they reached the end of the line already? Surely there were gentler ways to tell him than this. “You consecrated the ground?”

“What?” Aziraphale said, bolting upright in the throne. “Cons- no! Oh, no, not at all! It’s just warm! I… it was supposed to be a surprise, but I see I should have said something. It’s not consecrated, you can come in.”

Crowley’s vision was still minutely darkening around the edges from the too-fast beat of his heart. He swallowed thickly, but it made more sense to trust Aziraphale than not, so he took a tentative step forward. The floor was still warm, and he struggled against the knee-jerk reaction of pulling his foot away again immediately. Where his instinct had screamed _burning_ before, he realized it was only warm. Warmer than he had expected of the normally cool tile, but not nearly hot enough to burn.

“I asked you to keep away so I could have a heated floor installed,” Aziraphale told him, a little guiltily now. “I thought, you know, in the winter it would help keep your plants warm, but it would also be nice for you to lie on, if you wanted. As a snake, I mean. I’m terribly sorry, darling, I should have warned you.”

“No!” Crowley said quickly, calming more with every second. “I like surprises.” The last thing he wanted was for Aziraphale to think they couldn’t surprise one another. “Well. Ones from you, at least.”

“I’ll be more careful next time,” Aziraphale said as he clambered up from his seat. “I’d meant to meet you, but… as uncomfortable as that atrocity looks, would you believe, I nearly drifted right off in it, waiting to see if the floor worked?”

“You didn’t test it?” Crowley asked as Aziraphale moved into his space tentatively, as if unsure now of his welcome. Crowley couldn’t have that. He closed the distance enough to pull Aziraphale into a hug, which served to reassure them both, and dissipated the last of Crowley’s fear that something terrible had happened.

“They did leave only an hour or so ago,” Aziraphale mumbled into his shoulder, hands warm on his back. “And I was making dinner. I do hope you like lasagna.”

“I think I’d like anything you make,” Crowley said, not releasing him just yet. “Do the breadsticks need to go in soon?”

“Oh, the breadsticks!” Aziraphale echoed, squirming out of Crowley’s grasp and then dashing for the kitchen.

Crowley smiled, watching him disappear before turning to get a better look around the room. The battered, old tile that Crowley had decided to live with even if he hadn’t particularly liked it was completely gone, replaced corner-to-corner with beautiful, dark stone with enough texture that he would be able to move easily over it if he did take his serpent form. It would hold heat well – perhaps a little too well, it was actually getting hot to stand on now – and it looked nice. Just looking at it made his heart feel too big for his chest, to know Aziraphale had not only thought about him as he was, but as he could be, and had moved to make him happy that way, too.

Deciding to worry about the location of the plants in the morning, he followed after Aziraphale and stopped in the entrance of the kitchen. Aziraphale was just closing the oven again, and the room smelled like sauce and garlic and warm cheese all at once. Crowley leaned against the door frame, out of the way, until Aziraphale had set the pot holders on the island and looked over at him.

“I brought dessert,” Crowley said. “French silk tarts.”

“Those can’t have been easy to find,” Aziraphale said. “Wine?”

“Please,” Crowley said, watching then as Aziraphale pulled down two glasses from one of the cabinets. They had added more plates and utensils and other cookware since moving in, but they still had an entire cabinet dedicated to alcoholic glassware. That their collection had not filled more space was the real surprise. “And it wasn’t too hard. Place down the way from you’s been experimenting with pastries and other desserts,” he added. “Picked up something for the morning, too.”

Aziraphale followed the line of Crowley’s nod, to one of the other packages he’d brought. Aziraphale raised a brow, but rather than ask, he set down the glasses and opened the lid to peek in, and then smiled broadly. “Pain au chocolat,” he said, obviously pleased.

“I know they’re better fresh,” Crowley hedged, “but I haven’t found anywhere nearby yet.”

“Perhaps we can learn to make them!” Aziraphale said, brightening. “It can’t be that hard, can it?”

Crowley didn’t want to ruin the excitement, so he just gave his best encouraging shrug. He moved into the kitchen enough to snag the bottle of red sitting on the counter and passed it to Aziraphale. The one in the fridge, he decided, had probably been put there for dessert, or at least as an after-dinner wind-down.

“Why not pour us a glass, and while the bread’s baking, maybe you can show me how to work the floor?” he asked, to avoid having to discuss the difficulty of pastry-making. They were still working on pasta, after all, and that had seemed pretty simple. “It’s just a little too warm.”

“Certainly!” Aziraphale said, popping the cork and giving it a moment before he began to pour. “You know,” he added idly as he moved to the second wine glass, “it cools as well. If you get too warm in the summer. I don’t know if that’s a problem for a demon, but I thought it might be for the plants.”

Crowley just smiled. It seemed, he mused as he accepted the first glass of wine for the evening, that despite being friends for over six thousand years, they still had a lot to learn about one another. Now that they had the freedom to do so, Aziraphale appeared ready to do so with vigor. Crowley delicately clinked the lip of his glass against Aziraphale’s, and thought about how he could not have been happier about the prospect.


	8. Unpacking

Unpacking was, by Crowley’s estimation, definitely, absolutely invented by Hell.

_Packing_ just involved taking everything from where it was, and putting it into boxes however it fit. Anyone that had ever played Tetris – and Crowley had played a _lot_ of Tetris, and was planning on introducing Aziraphale to Tetris at some point – probably enjoyed packing. People who felt better after throwing away things they didn’t need probably liked packing as well, as it involved a lot of that. People who were excited to go someplace new probably at least didn’t mind it.

But no one really liked _unpacking_.

Part of it was trying to keep in mind everything that had gone _into_ the boxes, which involved remembering if he had actually put it _in_ a box or if he had simply seen it before throwing it away. Providing he could remember which things he had actually packed, he then had to remember which boxes everything had gone in, and keep spaces open if certain groups of things had made it into separate boxes.

This went even more poorly when it was things which were not his coming out of boxes he hadn’t packed.

“We could just put them all on the shelves, and you can sort them from there,” Crowley suggested as he turned a book to its spine and read the author. Aziraphale’s filing system was, to be perfectly honest, incomprehensible. They’d been unpacking books for hours, now that all of the repairs and building they had wanted had gotten finished and all the furnishings were in place. The house was finally ready to move into for real. “Get the boxes out of the way faster.”

“Not everything is about speed,” Aziraphale tutted. “You haven’t got to help, you know. You did a lovely job with the shelves, I can take it from here if you want to get to unpacking something else.”

Crowley glanced up, eyes ticking over the beautiful array of colors he had painted into all the bookshelves. He had considered doing it like the bedroom, in black and swirling, ethereal colors, but the Garden seemed more appropriate. If nothing else, the pale blue sky painted on the ceiling bounced back more light for reading, and he was able to leave the dark wood of the shelves exposed to play the trunks of laden fruit trees.

“Sick of my company already?” Crowley asked with a grin.

He knew it wasn’t true. Before, when things had been much less certain, there had always been a thread of worry when he asked that question. Always, in the back of his mind, he expected Aziraphale to say _yes_ and _mean_ it. That was not the case anymore. Now he knew the dry look he would get for his joke. Now Aziraphale knew he knew, and wouldn’t even try to explain why that wasn’t the case.

Clarity of communication was a hell of a drug that Crowley had swiftly fallen in love with.

“You could find a place for some of your art,” Aziraphale said, ignoring the joke. “The ones you didn’t make, that is.”

“Already put up most of it,” Crowley said, trying valiantly, to keep a straight face. “Had to fetch my angels statue from the museum you donated it to, though. Hope you like it in the kitchen.”

Aziraphale grimaced. “Tell me you didn’t, you wretched creature,” he said, leaning to actually look at Crowley. “If it belongs anywhere, it’s the bedroom.”

“Oh really?” Crowley asked, grin spilling out from hiding. “Bit of wrestling get you in the mood?” Crowley waggled his brows.

Aziraphale’s ears pinked a little. “It does _not_ ,” he lied, and then made a face that set Crowley laughing. “Even if it _didn’t_ , it’s hardly appropriate for company.”

“Who’re you expecting to have over?” Crowley asked, smile still splitting his face. “S’not like Heaven and Hell are coming here for us, and even if they did, they ought to have to look at it. Gabriel could use a bit of wrestling with his demon, if you ask me.”

“Not them,” Aziraphale said, almost quietly. “We have friends, you know. Human ones, as brief as they will be.”

That sobered Crowley right up. He knew exactly who Aziraphale spoke of, and why he thought they were friends. The older woman, Tracy, had come to the bookshop a few times after her possession-by-angel, and had tea. Anathema had called the shop with questions a month after the world didn’t end, and had somehow gotten hold of Crowley’s number as well. And she _texted_ him, sure, but… friends? They hadn’t exactly made an effort in that department. They’d been far too wrapped up in sorting _themselves_ out to bother sorting relationships with anyone else. Not to mention what Aziraphale had just pointed out… human lifespans were so very, very short, and all but the children were well-started into them when they met, and it had been a few years now.

“You want to bring them here?” Crowley asked, strained. “Let them into our...”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, but gently. He set the books he was holding onto the shelf in front of him and then rested his hands upon the shelf itself, not looking at Crowley. “It’s just… we’ve been friends with humans here or there, but they thought we were… well, _human_. Or at least most of them did. But these ones know what we are. We wouldn’t have to worry about being someone else, if they came visit. And while I have enjoyed being as much myself as I ever could around you these last six millennia, and even more myself than that the last few years… it’s just, I’m afraid I’ve never gotten to be myself for anyone else. Not my real self, anyway. And what if I am more than the things I am when I am around you? What if I find I am other things, with other people? What if I don’t even really know who I am? Or who I could be, now?”

His grip was so tight on the shelf his knuckles had turned white, and his voice had risen to a stressed pitch as he’d wound himself up to the end. Crowley crossed the short distance between them to lay his hand on one of Aziraphale’s, and felt Aziraphale’s grasp loosen immediately. Aziraphale surrendered completely when Crowley pulled him into a hug, and Crowley didn’t say a single word about the damp on his collar a moment later.

“We can have over whoever you want,” Crowley murmured into is soft curls. “Of course you’re more than you’ve been allowed to be, Aziraphale. You’re more than you’ve been able to let yourself be. You’re more than just what you are to me. Of course you are. Whatever you need to figure yourself out, I will do everything in my power to help you get. Alright?”

Aziraphale nodded against his shoulder and then took a shaky breath and pulled away, straightening himself up and picking at the fit of his clothing as if a thread of it were out of place even now. Crowley didn’t know what else to say or do, so he waited until Aziraphale had composed himself before trying.

“Come on,” he offered, scooping up a book from the closest box and passing it to Aziraphale. “What say you unpack here, and I’ll get the telly working so we can watch a movie.”

“With popcorn?” Aziraphale asked hopefully, fiddling absently with the book, all of his attention on Crowley now.

“Anything you like,” Crowley said. He’d learned to make air-popped popcorn and stovetop popcorn and they’d learned caramel corn in class. He was fairly confident that a good bowl of special-request popcorn would cheer Aziraphale up, even if it wouldn’t solve any problems.

With a nod, Aziraphale looked down to the book in his hands, considered it, and then took two steps back to put it in its rightful, if completely nonsensical, place. “Alright,” he agreed. “I’d like to work as long as there’s sunlight though. Perhaps you could unpack some other things until then?”

Crowley nodded, got close enough to smush a kiss to Aziraphale’s cheek while Aziraphale wrinkled his nose and leaned into it, and then he took off for the upstairs to do just that. There was clothing to unpack – for he _did_ actually own a few material pieces – and keepsakes to find new homes for and he even had his own books, though they took up only a couple of shelves.

And when they had both had their fill of the wretched business of unpacking their pasts, Crowley would make the popcorn, and Aziraphale would pick the movie, and they would curl up on the couch together to share. Aziraphale would almost certainly end up with his head on Crowley’s shoulder and Crowley would definitely end up holding his hand once the empty popcorn bowl had been set aside. They would stay that way until the credits had rolled to the end and the television had been shut off, and the first glimmer of dawn began to peek over the horizon.

And then perhaps a just little bit longer, just because they wanted to, just because they finally, finally could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back to 8h days at work so I don't have nearly as much time to write in the evenings anymore, but I am still here and still writing and it's still lovely to hear from you folks! Two more chapters to go!


	9. The Cellar

Despite Crowley’s earliest reservations, they did manage to fit all of the books Aziraphale wanted close, which was not _all_ of the books, but it was a great deal more of them than Crowley expected to fit the shelves and a great deal fewer than he had figured Aziraphale would want. The cottage, previously the sort of full that felt like anxiety closing in, became the sort of closed in that felt like home to Crowley. It felt like walking in the bookshop’s front door, except the fear of being found out by his side – or worse, of finding an angel that was not Aziraphale standing in the stacks – didn’t follow at his heel.

Instead, he opened the door to find himself scooped up in the heady, homey feel of Aziraphale’s cluttered space, although wreathed in touches of his own; their hats both hanging by the door, his paint on the shelves beneath the books, and perhaps most importantly, the place had begun to smell of both of them, angel and demon alike in a way Aziraphale had never tolerated the bookshop to do, out of fear.

Now they could.

Now they _did._

Now they had put away all of their things, and cleared away the boxes. They had bought the things that needed buying, and sold the things that needed selling. Crowley hadn’t kept the wrestling statue after all, and Aziraphale sold several of the rugs that were in less than stellar condition, and the rest had found a place, a home, or a compromise in their lives. The eagle, after Crowley had admitted where it came from, greeted guests in the foyer, and that was what had led to their current project: the cellar.

While it might not _seem_ connected, shortly after inviting Anathema and her young man – Crowley learned his name was Newt without having to admit he hadn’t known that at all – over for the first time, Aziraphale had realized they had an entire cabinet for glasses to serve alcoholic beverages and hardly anywhere to put them. They would be greeting _guests_ without a selection of drinks, and that just wouldn’t do. However, instead of doing what any reasonable human might have done, and purchase a few bottles of something from the middle ground of prices, Aziraphale had decided they should clean out and refit the outbuilding that had once, ostensibly, been an above-ground cellar of some sort, and begin to fill it completely.

Crowley felt a little bad evicting the vast quantity of spiders that had practically set up a society in the rafters and corners, but it had to be done. He let them go along the low garden wall, and told them to stay on this side of it because the other side of it had things that would hurt them, and he very dutifully ignored the little pang that lanced through his chest at the words. But there were no tiny apple trees for the spiders to eat from, and Crowley certainly wouldn’t kick them out even if they did.

The racks would have taken no time at all to order from somewhere, but Aziraphale insisted that Crowley help him build them himself, using what he had learned from the bookshelves. Crowley decided that it wasn’t all _that_ different anyway, and they had the tools already, and if he got to watch Aziraphale work a bit of wood, well. He certainly wasn’t complaining, even a little.

They had to scrap the first one they made, and the second was… questionable, but not to the point of collapse. The third one they did turned out better than expected, and after that they made the ones they actually planned to use, and Crowley took the others to neighboring cottages and left them on porches. It was, he reasoned, bound to cause some confusion, which was surely adjacent to demonic activity. He did have a reputation to uphold until he decided whether or not a reputation was something he wanted.

When Crowley was certain that Aziraphale could handle building the racks, he left him to it, but not by much. Aziraphale built in the yard, while Crowley prowled the length and breadth of it, assessing what plants were already there, and which ones he would like to add. He brought home a small garden cart and some gloves and over the course of the week, he pulled every weed he could find, pruned back bushes and plants that had begun to take over, fought an entire war with two mint plants, and marked a tree he wanted out before whatever was wrong with it spread to the others. By the time he was finished, Aziraphale had three of the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling racks built and stained, and was looking quite proud of himself.

“Do you need any help?” Crowley asked when they both took a break. Aziraphale had made sun tea and decided it was ready, and Crowley found he actually liked it a good deal.

Aziraphale smiled. “I was just about to ask you the same thing,” he admitted, and then took a sip of his own drink. “I think the rest can wait ‘til after, if you do.”

“Nah,” Crowley said, drawing the word out. “Have to decide what goes in, now.”

“Are you doing only flowers?” Aziraphale asked, in the sort of tone that suggested he very much hoped not.

“Doesn’t have to be...” Crowley said. “What did you have in mind?”

Aziraphale fidgeted with his glass for a moment before visibly steeling himself. “I thought maybe we might… have a vegetable garden. Or maybe herbs. We could cook with them, you know. They’d be useful, and they wouldn’t be that much more-”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupted, but gently. “They don’t have to be useful to be desired, or to stay.”

When Aziraphale looked up at him, the weight of millennia of treatment from Heaven that had said otherwise landed squarely in Crowley’s chest. For just one moment, Crowley wished he could be back, standing before that pillar of hellfire, with Gabriel only a stone’s throw away. If he could have a second shot, he wouldn’t indulge in parlor tricks; he’d raze the entire place to the ground and live up to every story ever told about the Serpent of Eden eating ash.

He didn’t let the snarl show on his face. Instead, he set down his glass and closed the distance between them and nosed his way into Aziraphale’s space, pulling him close and pressing quick, shallow kisses over his cheeks and jaw until Aziraphale snorted and lost the battle to hide a smile.

“You are ridiculous,” Aziraphale told him when he stopped, though neither of them moved away.

“Ridiculous?!” Crowley squawked incredulously, if not very loudly. “You’re the one who insisted I treat the plants the way I think you ought to be treated, and I think you deserve to be treated exactly like this. Heaven can get bent if they don’t see the worth in your existence.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a beat too long, enough that Crowley pulled away to look at him, afraid that it was still too soon to say such things to Aziraphale. He’d always been sensitive to criticism of Heaven, but it had been easier for Crowley to get away with lately. He didn’t want to set the clock back on that front.

“You know,” Aziraphale said slowly, “that used to be my fear.”

Crowley’s nose wrinkled. “They’re wankers, angel,” he assured him gently, a little more sure that they were still on solid ground. Maybe even that Aziraphale needed to hear it, just a little. “Can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground. You should have been-”

“Not Heaven,” Aziraphale interrupted before he could get too far into his rant. Crowley stopped, brow furrowing, and Aziraphale pushed on. “I meant you.”

Crowley deflated. “Me?” he said weakly. Aziraphale had been afraid of _him_?

“Not _you_ you,” Aziraphale rushed to say. “I mean, that you only stayed because you thought I was _useful._ It would be quite handy for a demon, having an angel around, wouldn’t it?”

“I- Aziraphale, I would never-”

“I know,” Aziraphale assured him. “I know that now, I’ve known that for a _while_ now. But I did fear it, once.”

Crowley stared at him, heart twisted up into his throat. He had known – of course he had known – that he’d gotten under Aziraphale skin a few times, made him angry, annoyed him even, but he had never once thought Aziraphale might be _afraid_ of him. “What… changed your mind?”

“You asked me for holy water,” Aziraphale admitted, not meeting his eyes now, absorbed in where he placed his glass very precisely. “I pitched quite a fit, I’m afraid. I thought, that was it. You’d spent a few thousand years playing nice, and this was why. I didn’t know _why_ you would want it, it seemed very dangerous for _you_ after all, and that was a… a different sort of fear, I suppose. And I thought if I told you off and left, it would be easier to just… be done with it. With you.”

There were a million things Crowley could say about that, about Aziraphale really thinking Crowley would _use_ him like that, but he kept them behind his teeth where they belonged. Despite the subject matter, this wasn’t really about _him_. This was about Aziraphale coming to terms with something Crowley hadn’t even thought to worry about Aziraphale having to come to terms with.

“And then you showed up in a church, of all places, just to protect something I cared about.” When Crowley opened his mouth to protest that he had come to save _Aziraphale_ , Aziraphale spoke right over the top of him. “Oh, don’t bother, Crowley. You saved me _paperwork_ but it wasn’t like… other… times you came to rescue me. I didn’t know you’d come for me, for one, and for another, you nearly blew us both up.”

“Nearly,” Crowley pointed out.

Aziraphale gave him a dry look. “Near enough,” he said. “But you had no reason to save me the paperwork, and even less of a reason to protect my books from the blast while you did it. I’d thought I wouldn’t see you again after I’d told you no, after I’d… I wasn’t useful to you anymore, and then you showed up, and I thought surely the only reason I was possibly seeing you again was business. Of course you were there for evil. But then… it wasn’t that at all, and I began to understand.”

“And what’s that?” Crowley asked, his voice cracking a little over the words, his skin prickling with the moment. Even with the sort of communication they had taught themselves these last few years, it was still nearly impossible to get Aziraphale to talk about their past. He was _never_ this candid about it, and it left Crowley with the same sensation as missing a step.

“That your friendship might be genuine,” Aziraphale said with a little wince. “That perhaps you really did just… _like_ me. Not because I could do your job, or give you holy water, or what have you, but just… just because you liked _me_.”

“Took you that long, eh?” Crowley ribbed, though it held only amusement.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but he smiled a little. “It’s not like I had many good examples of friendship, you know.”

“Gabriel’s not exactly the warm fuzzies sort of angel,” Crowley agreed in an overly-earnest tone, which earned him a swat and a reflection of his own grin.

“Don’t bring his name into this garden,” Aziraphale scolded him, without malice.

“Right,” Crowley said, “plants only in this garden, no archangels.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said slowly and a bit hopefully, “maybe not _only_ plants?” When Crowley raised a brow, Aziraphale pushed on. “I wasn’t going to ask yet, it’s just… I would dearly love to keep a hive or two. I haven’t kept bees since that time I had work in Italy.”

“Bees?” Crowley echoed. It hadn’t occurred to him, but it made a lot of sense. They’d do well for the flowers, and definitely for the vegetables and- “Alright, bees, sure. What do you think of fruit trees?”

“Should I think something about fruit trees?” Aziraphale asked. They both had opinions about fruit trees, or at least Crowley was pretty sure they did, all things considered.

“I meant, in the garden,” Crowley amended.

Aziraphale made a little thoughtful face, the one that said he was about to be a little bit of a bastard, and said: “Well, I should think they would fare better there than on the moon.”

“Oh!” Crowley exclaimed, rolling his body along with his eyes. “Oh, how was I supposed to know? How was I supposed to know you can’t put a tree on the moon, it’s not like I’d been there, angel. They made that one after- After. S’got dirt, hasn’t it?”

“By some definitions, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, clearly suppressing laughter now. “I think fruit trees are a wonderful idea. Can you imagine, our own little orchard. Did you know, humans built a tree with dozens of different fruits growing from it? It’s not even magic! They call it grafting.”

“I know about grafting,” Crowley grumbled around his attempt at hiding his own smile. “You want me to make you a dozen-fruited tree? I could probably even do it without a miracle.” He very carefully did _not_ say _how hard could it be_ because he was trying a new thing where he learned from his mistakes.

“Perhaps we can learn together,” Aziraphale said. “Like the cooking. You can teach me about gardening.”

Crowley shifted a little from foot to foot. “I don’t… I can’t,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’ve never done gardening properly. My plants are all in pots.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, as if that had never once occurred to him, and then he brightened. “Well, that’s good news. We really will learn together. And we can grow herbs and vegetables and fruits- practically whole meals!”

“If we got one of those little patio firepits, we could roast marhsmallows for dessert,” Crowley said.

Of course he knew that the fruits would just as likely become desserts as side dishes or meals - Aziraphale had surely realized they could be used for pies already - but he did like a good roasted marshmallow. Unlike Aziraphale, who spent ten minutes toasting every side lightly golden, Crowley just jabbed his into the heart of the flame and pulled it out gooey and crispy at the same time.

“We could do that inside, you know,” Aziraphale pointed out. “There’s a fireplace in-”

_That_ slammed Crowley back to the present.

“No!” Crowley said, too quickly.

He snapped his mouth shut as soon as the word popped out, but the damage was done. He’d thought he’d gotten over that particular bit of history, but just the reminder of what had happened to the bookshop left the taste of ash in his mouth. Aziraphale had never seen it on fire; he had never seen it damaged at all and while he surely believed Crowley as to the legitimacy of the claim, it wasn’t the _same_ for him. Aziraphale didn’t flinch when he struck a match or lit the stove. He didn’t have the sense-memory to really screw him over.

Aziraphale softened. “Right,” he said gently. “No fires near the books.”

Which was ridiculous, Crowley thought with no small amount of irritation. They both knew that no fire would set a tongue out of place as long as either of them was present. Indeed even the bookshop wouldn’t have done so, had Aziraphale still had a corporation to be anywhere near it with, or if Crowley had been closer. There was no reason they couldn’t have a fire wherever they wanted, without burning a single thing they didn’t mean to. He knew, in his head, that it would be perfectly safe.

Still…

“I don’t like that thing being so close to you,” he confessed, almost under his breath.

For a moment, Aziraphale just stared at him, and Crowley wondered if he was passing some kind of judgment, or trying to find a way to convince him it would be fine. And then Aziraphale raised one hand, and snapped his fingers, and Crowley felt the blinding pulse of holy magic zing past him. He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt and without looking, that there was no more fireplace in the library.

“What happened to no miracles?” he joked weakly, despite the gratitude running so thick under his skin it made him dizzy.

Aziraphale closed up the space between them again and lay a gentle kiss to Crowley’s forehead. “Some things,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the other side, “are worth breaking the rules for, I’ve found. Come on.” He pulled away and held out his hand. “I think it’s time to call it a day here.”

“You know,” Crowley said as he took the offered hand, already feeling better, “I think you’re right. Spot of lunch, perhaps?”

Aziraphale smiled. “Lead the way, my dear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Well that one went longer than expected! Just one chapter left! Who's ready for the soft finale!!


	10. The End (The Beginning)

Crowley pushed the disturbed soil gently back around the base of the small flower he’d just placed, patting it down just firmly enough to make sure it wouldn’t completely collapse when he watered them, and then reached for the next one in the tray. His hand landed on empty space, and he glanced over to find there really were no more flowers. He’d gotten so absorbed in planting that he hadn’t realized he was done. He broke out in a grin.

“Well then,” he said to one of the honey bees currently investigating his work, “I guess that’s it for today.”

He took a glance at his watch, squinted up at the sky, and then looked around the garden. The chores were all done for the day. The orchard had been watered and pruned, he had refilled the pan the bees used for water, the vegetable garden had gotten weeded, and the herbs were all behaving themselves within their raised boxes. He’d put them in time out there in the spring, when they had proved quite industrious little conquerors. He’d had to pot the mint entirely out of the ground to get it to mind him, but it was.

He found it difficult to believe it had been a year since they first stood in the garden and talked about everything he saw before him now. It felt both longer and shorter, and while it was true that nothing was really _finished_ here, he didn’t think that was a bad thing. This was, after all, a beginning, not an end. In a few years the trees would bear fruit and he and Azirahale would have a better grasp on the vegetable garden, and there would be a supply of dried herbs so they could always choose fresh or dried for their dishes. But for now, the start of things was enough.

He checked his watch again, because he hadn’t actually registered anything the first time he looked, and wondered where exactly Aziraphale had gotten off to. He’d been the one fussed about the care of the special tree at the center of the little orchard, the one they were working on grafting different fruits to after all, and then he’d just disappeared with a string of something unintelligible muttered under his breath. Crowley had thought something went wrong, but as Azirapahle hadn’t been back, perhaps not.

“Probably just lost track of time,” Crowley told the bees, as he began to gather up the now-empty flats. He’d lost track of time too, and Aziraphale was very much in the habit of picking up a book to put it away and then sitting down to read it instead.

He dumped the used flats in the bin on his way in and took off his shoes just inside the utility room. He’d gotten actual shoes once he’d started gardening in earnest, both because he hated stepping on things and because it made having clean feet much easier. The house smelled amazing, like roasted garlic butter and baking potatoes. Aziraphale had gotten up to making dinner, then, a little earlier than usual. He washed his hands in the basin before heading to the kitchen.

“Need help?” he asked, startling Aziraphale so much he nearly dropped the pan he was dishing the potatoes from.

“Oh, drat,” Aziraphale said, picking up the chunk he had flung and tossing it into the sink to be dealt with later. “I’m not quite ready, I’m afraid.”

“That’s where the ‘help’ part comes in, angel,” Crowley said, leaning to peer toward the dining room. “I could set the table.”

“It’s set,” Aziraphale said quickly. “No, I- perhaps you could pick a wine for us while I finish up here? Pick something nice for seafood.”

Crowley gave him a bit of a suspicious once over. They’d visited an open market down by the beach that morning, and Aziraphale had brought home something fresh, but he had made it clear whatever it was, it was meant to be a surprise. However much Crowley did not like surprises, he couldn’t really argue with surprises from _Aziraphale_ , so he made a noise of assent and went right back out the way he’d come. He didn’t bother with shoes, just let his scales slide over the bottoms of his feet, and headed for the cellar. Aziraphale had finished building the racks the way he wanted, and installed them into the walls and into the center of the room, and they had spent the last year filling the slots with more than just wines.

He took his time picking a nice Chablis, something that would pair well with fish or shellfish, and then gave it a few more minutes just so Aziraphale would have time. If he went back too soon, Aziraphale would just send him off again rather than let him help. He got like that when he wanted to cook a meal by himself, especially if it was something they hadn’t had before. Sometimes what Aziraphale wanted was not to surprise Crowley by doing the cooking, but by what he’d made. He wanted Crowley to have no knowledge – and thus, no bias – when he tried the first bite.

Which was fine, Crowley told himself as he rolled the bottle between his hands a moment longer and then headed for the door. Aziraphale had kept secrets for so long that the habit was hard to break; this gave him an outlet for that deep-seated habit, without forcing them to keep secrets that mattered.

Aziraphale was at the back door when he returned, and took the bottle from him with a smile that almost looked _nervous_ , and Crowley wondered what exactly he’d cooked that he was so invested in, but he didn’t ask. He just followed Aziraphale through the kitchen and into the dining room, where he found at least part of his answer.

“Oysters?” he asked, grin spreading. Aziraphale had always had a soft spot for them. Crowley might have had too, although his had very little to do with the food and everything to do with the company he’d had the first time he’d ever tried one. “We didn’t learn that one in class.”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted as he popped the cork from the bottle and poured them each a glass. He held one out to Crowley. “I learned how to do this on my own.”

Crowley wasn’t sure what to think of that, but he took the glass, and then his seat, and allowed Aziraphale to plate the dinner for them both. It wasn’t very much like eating at a restaurant, where they would sit close enough to share a plate and eat surrounded by the murmur of human activity and not have to do any dishes afterward, but there was a certain something better about sitting at a table that really was _theirs_ , eating from plates they had picked out to buy, and sipping on wine from their shared cellar. He would say he wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it was, in fact, the very thing that not giving up on the world had allowed them to have.

As for the food itself, the oysters were, admittedly, very good, although Crowley was sure he’d had better at some point. The potatoes were small, able to be speared whole on a fork, and Crowley did so. He had gotten more used to eating a little slower now that the food was being made by hands he cared about. He had learned that if he focused a bit, he could actually taste the love that had gone into it.

Or at least, he imagined he could, and that was just as good where Crowley was concerned.

Perhaps more enjoyable than the food, as always, was the chance to slow down and listen to Aziraphale talk. There were plans to be made for the coming week, both here at the cottage and back in London. Crowley was finally ready to sell his flat, with everything having been moved out here or to the shop or sold. Aziraphale still had the small flat above the shop if they needed to stay in London overnight, which they did off and on. It was… big, in some ways. Their spaces were collapsing into one another just a little more.

In the closed space of his own mind, Crowley _liked_ it.

He _liked_ feeling welcome in Aziraphale’s spaces. He liked even more when those spaces really felt like _their_ spaces. The cottage didn’t belong to Aziraphale or to Crowley, it belonged to them both. And while the _shop_ belonged to Aziraphale, the flat above it had become _theirs_ as well. And it was _nice_ in ways Crowley wasn’t sure a demon _should_ feel nice, but he wasn’t much of a demon anymore really. The average human might say otherwise, but the average demon was likely to agree. His former bosses would certainly tell him he wasn’t a demon any longer, and they’d mean it as an insult, and Crowley was no longer sure he felt the same.

Which was alright by him, he’d long decided. He didn’t need to be a gold-star demon. He was alright being something not-quite-else, with Aziraphale.

“Crowley?”

He looked up and felt his cheeks heat a little as he realized he’d stopped listening at some point, lost in thought. “Uh,” he said intelligently. “Sorry, what?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips but rather than annoyance, Crowley found he could see concern in those familiar blue eyes. Hurt, even. “You seem a bit distracted. Are you alright?”

Crowley gave himself a little, internal shake. That wouldn’t do. “I’m fine,” he said, voice warm enough that it clearly melted some of Aziraphale’s concern. “I just uh- I got a little wrapped up, thinking about… about how happy I am.” His cheeks burned a little more with the admission, but Aziraphale deserved to hear it, especially since he was the cause of it.

“A happy demon,” Aziraphale said with a soft smile. “What a wonder.”

“Not very demonic of me, I know,” Crowley joked, and then popped the last of the potatoes into his mouth. It really was a very good dinner. He would have to make it up to Aziraphale, for practically ignoring it. Maybe he could cook one of his favorites tomorrow.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, as if that was an entire explanation, and it sort of was. It very politely did not say anything aloud about how many undemonic things he had done lately, while speaking quite concisely about whose side, exactly, he was on. “But you’re happy here? With me?”

“I am,” Crowley rushed to assure him. “Angel- Aziraphale, I’ve never been happier.”

Aziraphale seemed to debate something for a moment, and then he smiled again and clambered to his feet. “I made dessert,” he said as he lifted his own plate, and then skirted the table to fetch Crowley’s too. “I think you’ll like it.”

Crowley watched him disappear into the kitchen and a few minutes later, Aziraphale returned with smaller plates, ones specially designated for desserts, and he set one down by his own chair and then carefully, pointedly set the other in front of Crowley. Eyes on him, Crowley waited for him to return to sit, but he remained standing there until Crowley’s gaze fidgeted down to the dessert to see what Aziraphale expected from him.

His heart, used to beating at normal human rates for show, stopped dead in his chest at the sight of the little chocolate cup, filled with what was probably a truly delicious, thick mousse, and topped with a slender, golden ring.

His eyes flicked right back to Aziraphale, almost certainly giving away his every emotion because Aziraphale beamed and finally relaxed.

Aziraphale did not get down on one knee, but what he did was say: “We’ve been getting along here as humans for a short while now, and I thought perhaps if you were as happy as I am, we might give one more human tradition a try. If you’ll have me.”

Crowley swallowed down every nonsensical noise he wanted to babble out. That was what this had all been about, then- the oysters and the nerves and the concern. Aziraphale had wanted to _propose_ to him. Aziraphale had _just proposed to him._

“Yes,” he said, without any more hesitation even as he nearly broke the chair trying to push it back to get out and wrap himself around Aziraphale. “Yes, of course I’ll _have you_ , Aziraphale. I’d have married you on that bloody wall if it’d been invented yet.”

Aziraphale’s hands came up to rest warm on his back, and Crowley could practically feel the happiness radiating off of him in waves. “Oh, good,” Aziraphale mumbled into his shoulder, holding tight. “I’d hoped you would say that.”

Crowley laughed, and hugged him tighter.

Once upon a time, Crowley had thought that the pinnacle of happiness was a lot of different things. He had thought perhaps it was a place that he could reach if he took the right actions in the right order at the right time. He knew the truth now. There was no pinnacle. Happiness was not a thing to possess, or destination to reach, but a journey to be taken, and one to be taken with someone he loved.

A journey to be taken with _Aziraphale_ , he thought as he finally let go long enough to allow Aziraphale to wipe the ring clean and slip it onto his finger for him, laying a gentle kiss to his knuckles before releasing his hand.

And, he added to himself as he pulled Aziraphale into a proper kiss to celebrate, any traveler worth a damn knew that every good journey began and ended with a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap!  
> Thank you again to the Moonmoth for supporting charity work, and I hope the rest of you have a lovely day. Perhaps I will see you again soon! I am working on something a bit more dark/sad next, but with a happy ending, and then it's off to write about beauty-and-the-beast-swan-princess good omens fusions because Nen is a menace.


End file.
